Recently I outsourced a project to a company in India and its not working out as I hoped. Mainly programming work that I didn’t have the skill for and work that would take up a lot of my time. Over the years I’ve outsourced work through Elance and Rent A coder with great success, so I didn’t see this coming.  I hired a company with a supposed staff of programmers who said they could not only complete my task professionally, the price quoted was excellent. After-all, you don’t want to break the bank on one project.

It started off with a contract, a 1/3 payment and a promise that I would be assigned a dedicated project manager. All sounds very professional so far, since I’ve learned that communication is the key element to any outsourced project. If you cannot get it contact with the programmer, it can be hell. Things started to turn a bit sour after this.

- the project manager I was assigned took more than a week to contact me

- when I asked for an action plan, I was sent something a grade 8th student could do. - No real effort.

- I then made an action plan and sent it to the project manager - No response from him for another 4-5 days.

- finally got on the same page with the project manager and the actual programmer (now 2 weeks into the project)

- did a conference chat with everyone, since they had some questions. Gave me a chance to speak directly with the programmer.

- was promised a template to view in 3 days, that was 6 days ago.

Here’s the best part…

After the conference with the programmer and project manager, I got a message from the programmer. Basically he wanted to know about finance..

- how much did you pay for this contract

- did you know that I’m only getting “x” amount of dollars for this?

- my staff is depressed since we’re only getting “x” dollars for this project and it’s worth 1000’s more (Indian rupees).

…. basically it seems that the person who took my contract, then sub-contract it out a a very low rate to someone else. Now I have a programmer sending me messages about being under paid. Non-Stop questions about money! And no work for me to take a look at yet! I hate knowing that people are under paid, but I asked him if before taking th eproject he didn’t know what it was (required work) and how much he/his staff would be paid. So if you knew, why bitch like a facking baby to me?
Are you considering outsourcing your work? Ask yourself the following questions…

* Will outsourcing free up your business to focus on its strengths? This might produce tangible benefits, allowing your staff to concentrate on their main tasks and on the business’ future strategy.
* Will it improve your efficiency or customer service? The outsourcing company you choose should be a specialist in the process or service you ask them to carry out for you.

* Will your business gain a competitive advantage by outsourcing? Outsourcing can bring flexibility to a business, turning fixed costs into variable costs and freeing up capital. It can also give your business the edge when adapting to changing market conditions.